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Tuesday, March 15, 2011

TED 2011: Janna Levin, Soundtrack of the Universe

This review was written by Nina Khosla.

Score: 6 balloons

Janna Levin was TED's first speaker of the conference, and a physicist who focused on exploring and discovering a particular phenomenon - the sounds of space. While much of physics has focused on light - "most of what we know about the universe," she explained, "comes from light." But what about the sounds of space? What would space sound like if we could hear it? “The universe has a soundtrack, and that soundtrack is played on space itself," she began.

Levin took us on a journey to black holes, starting with the basic science of black holes. In particuar, black holes are interesting because you can't "see" a black hole using traditional methods - light tends to pass through a black hole rendering it all but invisible. From there, Levin shared with us the music and noises that a black hole would make in various situations - the drumbeat of black holes on space itself.

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